Weak Demand to Drag Down China TV Sales During Mid-Autumn Festival

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The combined TV set shipments of the six major Chinese TV brands – Changhong, Hisense, Haier, Konka, Skyworth and TCL (The Creative Life) – will total 58.43 million this year, according to the latest report from WitsView, a division of TrendForce. This year's estimated annual shipments from these six vendors represent a 2.7% increase compared with the 56.91 million sets shipped in 2014. Demand saturation and growing popularity of the emerging Internet brands are adding to the challenges that Chinese vendors will face in their domestic market in the upcoming holiday sales events. Vendors' main source of growth will therefore be based on their expansion and development of overseas markets.

WitsView estimates that the six major Chinese brands will shipped a total of 15.68 million TV sets this third quarter, showing a small year-on-year increase of 0.4%. This result is much lower than the earlier projections mainly because the second-quarter sales fell below expectations and retailers are holding excess inventories. Hence, TV vendors are now less willing to release additional shipments.

Moreover, the share of the annual sales that comes from the important Chinese holiday events is diminishing, so vendors have a more conservative view towards this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day sales. This downbeat outlook is also reflected in retailers’ stock-up demand. Though the TV panel market is seeing greater price decline this third quarter, Chinese TV vendors are too late to stimulate the market with lower priced TV sets.

The overall performance of the major Chinese brands was below expectation in the third quarter, but TCL, Hisense and Skyworth have emerged as clear leaders in their domestic market. TCL and Skyworth have made alliances with panel makers an important part for their strategies because of the fierce competition. TCL is supported by its subsidiary panel supplier, CSOT (China Star Optoelectronics), while Skyworth has a developed a close relationship with LG Display. Hisense, by contrast, distributes its panel orders among different suppliers. Moreover, Hisense has been actively acquiring foreign TV brands to expand its export sales operation and raise the sales volume of its branded products overseas. Based on WitsView's estimation, the combined shipments of the three leading Chinese vendors will grow 7.6% year on year.

Traditionally, third-quarter TV shipments are an important indicator of Chinese retailers' stock-up demand for the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day. Since this year’s third-quarter shipments have slowed for some Chinese TV brands, sales results from the two festivals this year may be weaker compared with results from a year ago. In sum, WitsView estimates that TV sales during this year's Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day will drop 4~5% year on year.